A short circuit (sometimes abbreviated tos hort ors /c)

in an electrical circuit is one that allows acurrent to

travel along a different path from the one originally
intended. The electrical opposite of a short circuit is an
"open circuit", which is an infinite resistance between
two nodes. It is common to misuse "short circuit" to
describe any electrical malfunction, regardless of the
actual problem.
What is short circuit?

A short circuit is a fault. It means there is a very low

resistance conducting path from one side of a

component to the other. For example a wire might have

come loose which connects two sides of a circuit

together. Or perhaps there's some moisture on the

surface of a component that means current can bypass it.

The wire or the moisture 'shorts' the circuit because the

length of the conducting path back to the battery has

Simulation A full explanation of what happens when a

bulb is shorted out.Now you've reduced the resistance of

the series circuit and so the current everywhere

increases. The current through the unshorted bulb

increases and so it gets brighter. But brightness isn't just

a function of current.

You have a low resistance (the shorted bulb) in series

with a higher resistance (the unshorted bulb) and this

changes the way the voltage is shared around the

circuit. The bigger resistance takes a bigger share of the

total voltage. So the second bulb is bright for these two

reasons, bigger current through it AND bigger voltage

across it. Remember that voltage and current are

connected. The current through the second bulb can

only increase because the voltage across it is bigger.

In the same way the shorted bulb has a very low voltage

across it so the current through it is very small and that's

why it's out. The wire doing the shorting has the same

voltage across it as the bulb but it also has a very low

resistance so the current through the wire is big. The

current through the wire and the current through the

bulb add up to the current through the unshorted bulb.